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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23898640">Failure</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bil/pseuds/Bil'>Bil</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Faces [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, Gen, Neville is wonderful but he has no one to tell him that, Self-Esteem Issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:06:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>907</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23898640</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bil/pseuds/Bil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Neville’s Gran tells him that he played with Harry Potter once. He believes that. But he doesn’t believe his Gran when she tells him that they got on well. Neville never gets on well with other children.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Augusta Longbottom &amp; Neville Longbottom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Faces [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Failure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A/N: Set when Neville’s about seven or eight.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neville’s Gran tells him that he played with Harry Potter once. This was a long time ago, of course, back when Neville had real parents, before Harry was the Boy Who Lived, before Harry was sent off to live in some far away place where it’s safe. (Neville’s always imagined it to be some kind of Arabian Nights place, with flying carpets and spicy deserts and all kinds of fantastical things, where Harry lives in the sultan’s palace. Susan laughed when he tried to explain this to her so he’s never told anyone else.)</p><p>Neville can believe that he’s played with the Boy Who Lived. He can even believe that he went to Harry’s first birthday party. None of that’s a surprise, because he probably played with three quarters of the pureblood and nearly-pureblood children his age before his Gran decided that he didn’t have his Dad’s gift for making himself popular. (Neville doesn’t like the word ‘pureblood’ because it makes him sound important and Neville knows he isn’t.)</p><p>He liked his life better after he stopped having to play with other children all the time. He’d rather help Dussy the house elf in the garden. (“Dusty”, the McMillian boy called her and that was the first time Neville ever hit anyone but he got in so much trouble for it that he’s never going to do it again.)</p><p>So he’s not surprised that even the Longbottom squib played with Harry Potter; no, that seems perfectly reasonable to him. But he doesn’t believe his Gran when she tells him that they got on well. Neville never gets on well with other children. He wonders if Harry pulled his hair like the Weasley girl or if he just hit him over the head with a toy broom like the younger Zabini.</p><p>But he doesn’t tell his Gran any of that because she likes thinking about how her grandson played with the hero when they were babies. It’s something to be proud of and Neville knows that there’s not much about him to be proud of. He does try, only he never gets very far. Failing is about the only thing he’s any good at.</p><p>She’s proud of his parents. She wants him to be proud of them too, but Neville doesn’t recognise them in the stories she tells him. To Neville his parents are just the scary people in the big, echoing hospital who never remember him even though he visits them every week.</p><p>They aren’t something to be proud of, not to him. He doesn’t remember them hugging him or talking to him or doing whatever it is parents do. (And he’s not really sure what parents do because he doesn’t look when other kids are with their mums and dads because he’s ashamed he doesn’t know all the things they know.) To him his parents are strangers in dressing gowns that his Gran forces him to visit. Nothing more.</p><p>His Mum always gives him bubblegum wrappers. Neville never gets bubblegum, because his Gran thinks chewing it is a disgusting habit and hardly lets him have sweets anyway, but he has lots of wrappers. He keeps them in a box under his bed and sometimes he takes them out and counts them. There’s one for nearly every time he’s ever visited.</p><p>He tried not to go once because he hates it. He hates the hospital and the healers looking at him with disapproval because he always does the wrong thing, he hates all the sick people making him feel like it’s his fault they’re ill, he hates the look on his Gran’s face when she looks at her son. But most of all he hates the strangers who are supposed to be his parents, blank slates that everyone expects him to somehow <em>love</em>. So he tried not to go and his Gran got even more angry than the time he hit Ernie.</p><p>She told him how lucky he is that he still has parents. Look at Harry Potter, she said (because she likes to talk about him – Neville thinks she wishes Harry was her grandson instead of just him). Harry Potter’s parents are <em>dead</em>. Neville didn’t tell her that that’s what he envies Harry for. Harry’s parents are dead and that’s awful but at least they’re <em>gone</em>. Neville’s parents are dead but they’re still here and he wishes they weren’t. He knows it makes him a hateful person (which is a horrible thing to have to realise when you’re only seven) but it’s still true.</p><p>If he could make a bargain, Neville thinks sometimes in the dark in his room (decorated by his Gran just how his Dad’s old room was), he would tell the Muggle God to take him and give back his parents. Because his Gran is proud of his Dad and he knows she’s never going to be proud of him. Neville isn’t someone people can be proud of. (That’s another horrible thing to have to understand when you’re only seven.) Dussy thinks he’s a clever gardener, but that’s not something to be proud of and when he tried to show his Gran she scolded him for being dirty. He only wants to make his Gran proud of him, to make up for the son she lost.</p><p>But Neville knows he’s never going to be able to do it. He’s just stupid, clumsy Neville. He doesn’t make people proud.</p><p>He wishes he could.</p><p>
  <em>Fin</em>
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